


hell couldn't handle us

by debeklena



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2014-04-28
Packaged: 2018-01-21 02:05:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1533626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/debeklena/pseuds/debeklena
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Damon/Katherine, with very minor Damon/Elena. Set somewhere mid season 5. He watches her body slide to the floor and thinks: "This is it. This is where it ends." He should know better: Katherine Pierce doesn't fade, and there's never been enough room for the two of them, even here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hell couldn't handle us

He watches her body slide to the floor and thinks, _this is it_.

 _This is where it ends_.

He should have been prepared for this. But he’s not, and he can only think that there should be some kind of handbook for burying ex-girlfriends with timed vendettas and not enough love to give. If Alaric was going to ditch them all, he could’ve at least left a list of instructions with the will tucked safely away in his sock drawer in the loft they can’t make themselves sell (tomorrow they’ll make the calls, always tomorrow—eventually they stop talking about it, though, and after little Gilbert took a trip to the Otherside and back and he realized he’s no better at crying for himself or fallen warriors than he is at saving them, he gave it up, rubbed dirt in his wounds, and let Elena believe that she’d never go to another funeral again.) He didn’t, though. Just left him to take care of the children and nurse baby birds back to health.

(Ric’s last words: _don’t screw it up_. Damon almost feels sorry for him for doubting his ability to keep from ‘screwing it up.’ It’s in his blood.)

He lays Katherine Pierce in six foot deep grave and thinks, _this is it_.

_This is where it ends._

(His blood screams something different entirely.)

He doesn't waste the energy it’d require to tell himself he feels nothing, and his heart can only register so many emotions at a time. He thinks he might understand Katherine now, understand why she couldn’t survive and love at the same time. He hopes Elena learns this before she ends up dead, too. (Maybe he’ll learn it someday, too. Katherine’s last lesson: live. He isn’t so sure he knows how to do that yet. ‘Lena pours him a glass of bourbon and tells him she understands. She probably doesn’t. He hopes she doesn’t. But it helps, all the same.)

Spoiler alert: it doesn’t end.

Katherine Pierce visits him in his dreams that night, and for a terrible moment he forgets to regret that Stefan is hauling Elena off to Whitmore because if they’re near each other odds are they’ll _eat_ each other. He tries to give it a good laugh (his mother died of consumption, too) and fails. Elena Gilbert shouldn’t have to know such things (maybe that’s why they work, and also why they don’t. He knows that if they were in Prague or Cape Horn or New York, a million miles away, they would work. If they could pretend he wouldn’t slaughter entire towns to keep her safe and she wouldn’t forgive all of his mistakes for the sake of loving too damn much. That’s always been their problem, after all.)

Katherine was smarter.

There’s no room in the ground for him beside her, and this is the way it’s supposed to be, he thinks: she loves without love, cares without caring, and belongs to no one but herself. (Her body’s long gone by now, and there’s no room for either of them; isn’t that how it’s always been?)

 _I’ll see you in hell_ , he tells her.

Like Hell could possibly handle both of them.


End file.
